HONEY JAR

Lately my studio has a lot of small oil studies lying around, all recently completed but nothing that I'm completely happy with. Most of these studies are landscapes so feeling rather frustrated, I decided to do something a bit different instead. I have quite a nice collection of small bottles and jars at home here and have been waiting for the right opportunity to do some paintings of them. So deciding to start of in a really simple manner, I picked up my oils and painted this small jar on a gesso-primed panel that I had lying around. I was quite captured by the structure of this jar and the way that the sunlight reflected and refracted through the glass. Most of the color in this painting comes from the lid (which is a bright brass color) and the small section of the label on the right. I oriented the jar this way as I mostly wanted to paint the effects of light bouncing around inside. I kept the background subdued in the hopes of allowing this idea to be more effective - I think it worked out okay but perhaps the jar is a little too bright against the darker background. Maybe I should have painted it when it was still full of honey! Oh well, that could be a project for my next study. All in all though, I really enjoyed working on this painting and am looking forward to doing more!